In Studio With… Mother
Photo Credit: Mor Weizman
Photo Credit: Mor Weizman
Photo Credit: Mor Weizman
Photo Credit: Mor Weizman
Photo Credit: Mor Weizman
Photo Credit: Mor Weizman
Photo Credit: Mor Weizman
Photo Credit: Mor Weizman
Photo Credit: Mor Weizman
Photo Credit: Mor Weizman
Photo Credit: Mor Weizman
Photo Credit: Mor Weizman
Photo Credit: Mor Weizman
Photo Credit: Mor Weizman
Photo Credit: Mor Weizman
Photo Credit: Mor Weizman
“I don’t think there was one square inch of space we didn’t use in our first office,” says Tim Kaeding, co-founder and designer of Mother, the Los Angeles-based denim line he helped launch in 2010. Now, as co-founder Lela Becker (who also serves as president of sales at Mother) notes, the two run a much larger denim operation downtown with design, shipping, sample sewing, customer server, sales, marketing, production and accounting all under one roof. Both founders have cultivated ongoing relationships with denim for years. Becker ran a showroom and represented 7 For All Mankind and later worked for Citizens of Humanity while Kaeding logged time at Gap and 7 For All Mankind. The Mother designs are distinguished by fit, technologically innovative fabrics, and labels and buttons that are matched to the tonal color of the pants. As a result, the sample-making room is filled with boxes of beautifully-colored spare hardware.
“The idea was to be small,” says Becker, and Kaeding notes that the founders wanted to eliminate the layers of people involved in decisions. “As we have ideas, we just do it. We don’t have to discuss or ponder it or have a committee come in,” he says. “We design a line almost every month now, but if we do it right, there should be a continuation of an idea that runs through multiple collections.” Each new line has a theme, a new color palette, and unique washes. “There’s always a blue, but there’s a lot of thought put into what blue is used,” Kaeding says. Becker says she likes faded washes, and for spring, Mother launched light-colored jeans and tropical prints that were almost bleached out or over-dyed. Each small capsule collection produced between seasonal collections inspires the larger spring and fall lines.
Recent launches include a punk collection with newsprint-patterned pants and a Boyscout collection complete with a military color palette inspired by Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom. These ideas carry through to upcoming fall collections inspired by collegiate themes and manifest in designs such as preppy khaki pants and also sweatshirts emblazoned with the word dropout across the front. “There’s a 60s angle to it,” says Kaeding, noting that the khakis are roughed up in just the right way. There’s also a touch of the 1984 Judd Nelson film Making the Grade, which Kaeding calls “the best movie ever.” In it, Nelson plays a street smart kid who is paid to pose as a trust fund case at a prep school and the juxtaposition is a perfect example of Mother’s polished aesthetic that somehow always has a bit of a edge. Such are the ideas that emerge daily from the line’s L.A. offices.
By Elizabeth Varnell
Pictured: Tim Kaeding and Lela Becker at the Mother office in Los Angeles.
Photo by Mor Weizman
